TED2013
Stuart Firestein: The pursuit of ignorance
Filmed:
Readability: 3.5
2,046,254 views
What does real scientific work look like? As neuroscientist Stuart Firestein jokes: It looks a lot less like the scientific method and a lot more like "farting around ... in the dark." In this witty talk, Firestein gets to the heart of science as it is really practiced and suggests that we should value what we don't know -- or "high-quality ignorance" -- just as much as what we know.
Stuart Firestein - Neuroscientist
Stuart Firestein teaches students and “citizen scientists” that ignorance is far more important to discovery than knowledge. Full bio
Stuart Firestein teaches students and “citizen scientists” that ignorance is far more important to discovery than knowledge. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
00:12
There is an ancient proverb that says
0
495
3558
00:16
it's very difficult to find a black cat in a dark room,
1
4053
4062
00:20
especially when there is no cat.
2
8115
2788
00:22
I find this a particularly apt description of science
3
10903
3329
00:26
and how science works --
4
14232
2136
00:28
bumbling around in a dark room, bumping into things,
5
16368
3320
00:31
trying to figure out what shape this might be,
6
19688
2302
00:33
what that might be,
7
21990
1444
00:35
there are reports of a cat somewhere around,
8
23434
2489
00:37
they may not be reliable, they may be,
9
25923
1793
00:39
and so forth and so on.
10
27716
1520
00:41
Now I know this is different than the way most people
11
29236
1976
00:43
think about science.
12
31212
1552
00:44
Science, we generally are told,
13
32764
1554
00:46
is a very well-ordered mechanism for
14
34318
2750
00:49
understanding the world,
15
37068
1301
00:50
for gaining facts, for gaining data,
16
38369
2286
00:52
that it's rule-based,
17
40655
1553
00:54
that scientists use this thing called the scientific method
18
42208
3241
00:57
and we've been doing this for 14 generations or so now,
19
45449
2839
01:00
and the scientific method is a set of rules
20
48288
2571
01:02
for getting hard, cold facts out of the data.
21
50859
4192
01:07
I'd like to tell you that's not the case.
22
55051
2095
01:09
So there's the scientific method,
23
57146
1832
01:10
but what's really going on is this. (Laughter)
24
58978
2319
01:13
[The Scientific Method vs. Farting Around]
25
61297
958
01:14
And it's going on kind of like that.
26
62255
3104
01:17
[... in the dark] (Laughter)
27
65359
1421
01:18
So what is the difference, then,
28
66780
4541
01:23
between the way I believe science is pursued
29
71321
3816
01:27
and the way it seems to be perceived?
30
75137
2861
01:29
So this difference first came to me in some ways
31
77998
2715
01:32
in my dual role at Columbia University,
32
80713
2097
01:34
where I'm both a professor and run a laboratory in neuroscience
33
82810
4155
01:38
where we try to figure out how the brain works.
34
86965
2195
01:41
We do this by studying the sense of smell,
35
89160
2371
01:43
the sense of olfaction, and in the laboratory,
36
91531
2531
01:46
it's a great pleasure and fascinating work
37
94062
2634
01:48
and exciting to work with graduate students and post-docs
38
96696
2871
01:51
and think up cool experiments to understand how this
39
99567
2611
01:54
sense of smell works and how the brain might be working,
40
102178
2386
01:56
and, well, frankly, it's kind of exhilarating.
41
104564
2802
01:59
But at the same time, it's my responsibility
42
107366
2718
02:02
to teach a large course to undergraduates on the brain,
43
110084
2949
02:05
and that's a big subject,
44
113033
1075
02:06
and it takes quite a while to organize that,
45
114108
2391
02:08
and it's quite challenging and it's quite interesting,
46
116499
2811
02:11
but I have to say, it's not so exhilarating.
47
119310
3557
02:14
So what was the difference?
48
122867
1396
02:16
Well, the course I was and am teaching
49
124263
2069
02:18
is called Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience - I. (Laughs)
50
126332
6464
02:24
It's 25 lectures full of all sorts of facts,
51
132796
4555
02:29
it uses this giant book called "Principles of Neural Science"
52
137351
4317
02:33
by three famous neuroscientists.
53
141668
2334
02:36
This book comes in at 1,414 pages,
54
144002
3781
02:39
it weighs a hefty seven and a half pounds.
55
147783
2736
02:42
Just to put that in some perspective,
56
150519
1927
02:44
that's the weight of two normal human brains.
57
152446
3455
02:47
(Laughter)
58
155901
3283
02:51
So I began to realize, by the end of this course,
59
159184
3267
02:54
that the students maybe were getting the idea
60
162451
2248
02:56
that we must know everything there is to know about the brain.
61
164699
3031
02:59
That's clearly not true.
62
167730
1762
03:01
And they must also have this idea, I suppose,
63
169492
2698
03:04
that what scientists do is collect data and collect facts
64
172190
3381
03:07
and stick them in these big books.
65
175571
2089
03:09
And that's not really the case either.
66
177660
1407
03:11
When I go to a meeting, after the meeting day is over
67
179067
3303
03:14
and we collect in the bar over a couple of beers with my colleagues,
68
182370
3097
03:17
we never talk about what we know.
69
185467
2201
03:19
We talk about what we don't know.
70
187668
2166
03:21
We talk about what still has to get done,
71
189834
2285
03:24
what's so critical to get done in the lab.
72
192119
2825
03:26
Indeed, this was, I think, best said by Marie Curie
73
194944
2557
03:29
who said that one never notices what has been done
74
197501
2419
03:31
but only what remains to be done.
75
199920
1461
03:33
This was in a letter to her brother after obtaining
76
201381
2225
03:35
her second graduate degree, I should say.
77
203606
3718
03:39
I have to point out this has always been one of my favorite pictures of Marie Curie,
78
207324
2813
03:42
because I am convinced that that glow behind her
79
210137
2303
03:44
is not a photographic effect. (Laughter)
80
212440
2738
03:47
That's the real thing.
81
215178
1800
03:48
It is true that her papers are, to this day,
82
216978
4380
03:53
stored in a basement room in the Bibliothèque Française
83
221358
2879
03:56
in a concrete room that's lead-lined,
84
224237
2197
03:58
and if you're a scholar and you want access to these notebooks,
85
226434
2652
04:01
you have to put on a full radiation hazmat suit,
86
229086
2749
04:03
so it's pretty scary business.
87
231835
2351
04:06
Nonetheless, this is what I think we were leaving out
88
234186
2796
04:08
of our courses
89
236982
1626
04:10
and leaving out of the interaction that we have
90
238608
2526
04:13
with the public as scientists, the what-remains-to-be-done.
91
241134
2973
04:16
This is the stuff that's exhilarating and interesting.
92
244107
2634
04:18
It is, if you will, the ignorance.
93
246741
2910
04:21
That's what was missing.
94
249651
979
04:22
So I thought, well, maybe I should teach a course
95
250630
2860
04:25
on ignorance,
96
253490
2100
04:27
something I can finally excel at, perhaps, for example.
97
255590
3629
04:31
So I did start teaching this course on ignorance,
98
259219
1878
04:33
and it's been quite interesting
99
261097
1096
04:34
and I'd like to tell you to go to the website.
100
262193
2086
04:36
You can find all sorts of information there. It's wide open.
101
264279
3636
04:39
And it's been really quite an interesting time for me
102
267915
3523
04:43
to meet up with other scientists who come in and talk
103
271438
1841
04:45
about what it is they don't know.
104
273279
1548
04:46
Now I use this word "ignorance," of course,
105
274827
1985
04:48
to be at least in part intentionally provocative,
106
276812
3158
04:51
because ignorance has a lot of bad connotations
107
279970
2390
04:54
and I clearly don't mean any of those.
108
282360
2005
04:56
So I don't mean stupidity, I don't mean a callow indifference
109
284365
3505
04:59
to fact or reason or data.
110
287870
2308
05:02
The ignorant are clearly unenlightened, unaware,
111
290178
3271
05:05
uninformed, and present company today excepted,
112
293449
3307
05:08
often occupy elected offices, it seems to me.
113
296756
2908
05:11
That's another story, perhaps.
114
299664
1806
05:13
I mean a different kind of ignorance.
115
301470
1633
05:15
I mean a kind of ignorance that's less pejorative,
116
303103
2268
05:17
a kind of ignorance that comes from a communal gap in our knowledge,
117
305371
3487
05:20
something that's just not there to be known
118
308858
1865
05:22
or isn't known well enough yet or we can't make predictions from,
119
310723
2821
05:25
the kind of ignorance that's maybe best summed up
120
313544
2318
05:27
in a statement by James Clerk Maxwell,
121
315862
1845
05:29
perhaps the greatest physicist between Newton and Einstein,
122
317707
3449
05:33
who said, "Thoroughly conscious ignorance
123
321156
2301
05:35
is the prelude to every real advance in science."
124
323457
2568
05:38
I think it's a wonderful idea:
125
326025
1388
05:39
thoroughly conscious ignorance.
126
327413
3147
05:42
So that's the kind of ignorance that I want to talk about today,
127
330560
2421
05:44
but of course the first thing we have to clear up
128
332981
1519
05:46
is what are we going to do with all those facts?
129
334500
2103
05:48
So it is true that science piles up at an alarming rate.
130
336603
3674
05:52
We all have this sense that science is this mountain of facts,
131
340277
2810
05:55
this accumulation model of science, as many have called it,
132
343087
4036
05:59
and it seems impregnable, it seems impossible.
133
347123
2451
06:01
How can you ever know all of this?
134
349574
1314
06:02
And indeed, the scientific literature grows at an alarming rate.
135
350888
3581
06:06
In 2006, there were 1.3 million papers published.
136
354469
3654
06:10
There's about a two-and-a-half-percent yearly growth rate,
137
358123
2632
06:12
and so last year we saw over one and a half million papers being published.
138
360755
4390
06:17
Divide that by the number of minutes in a year,
139
365145
2230
06:19
and you wind up with three new papers per minute.
140
367375
3138
06:22
So I've been up here a little over 10 minutes,
141
370513
1482
06:23
I've already lost three papers.
142
371995
1776
06:25
I have to get out of here actually. I have to go read.
143
373771
2840
06:28
So what do we do about this? Well, the fact is
144
376611
3446
06:32
that what scientists do about it is a kind of a controlled neglect, if you will.
145
380057
4509
06:36
We just don't worry about it, in a way.
146
384566
2664
06:39
The facts are important. You have to know a lot of stuff
147
387230
2243
06:41
to be a scientist. That's true.
148
389473
1810
06:43
But knowing a lot of stuff doesn't make you a scientist.
149
391283
2927
06:46
You need to know a lot of stuff to be a lawyer
150
394210
2665
06:48
or an accountant or an electrician or a carpenter.
151
396875
3892
06:52
But in science, knowing a lot of stuff is not the point.
152
400767
3610
06:56
Knowing a lot of stuff is there to help you get
153
404377
3556
06:59
to more ignorance.
154
407933
1388
07:01
So knowledge is a big subject, but I would say
155
409321
2510
07:03
ignorance is a bigger one.
156
411831
2487
07:06
So this leads us to maybe think about, a little bit
157
414318
2194
07:08
about, some of the models of science that we tend to use,
158
416528
2883
07:11
and I'd like to disabuse you of some of them.
159
419411
1825
07:13
So one of them, a popular one, is that scientists
160
421236
2313
07:15
are patiently putting the pieces of a puzzle together
161
423549
2628
07:18
to reveal some grand scheme or another.
162
426177
2773
07:20
This is clearly not true. For one, with puzzles,
163
428950
2558
07:23
the manufacturer has guaranteed that there's a solution.
164
431508
3499
07:27
We don't have any such guarantee.
165
435007
1749
07:28
Indeed, there are many of us who aren't so sure about the manufacturer.
166
436756
3155
07:31
(Laughter)
167
439911
3063
07:34
So I think the puzzle model doesn't work.
168
442974
1757
07:36
Another popular model is that science is busy unraveling things
169
444731
3514
07:40
the way you unravel the peels of an onion.
170
448245
2196
07:42
So peel by peel, you take away the layers of the onion
171
450441
2989
07:45
to get at some fundamental kernel of truth.
172
453430
2319
07:47
I don't think that's the way it works either.
173
455749
2187
07:49
Another one, a kind of popular one, is the iceberg idea,
174
457936
2934
07:52
that we only see the tip of the iceberg but underneath
175
460870
2460
07:55
is where most of the iceberg is hidden.
176
463330
2185
07:57
But all of these models are based on the idea of a large body of facts
177
465515
3554
08:01
that we can somehow or another get completed.
178
469069
2420
08:03
We can chip away at this iceberg and figure out what it is,
179
471489
3343
08:06
or we could just wait for it to melt, I suppose, these days,
180
474832
2605
08:09
but one way or another we could get to the whole iceberg. Right?
181
477437
3227
08:12
Or make it manageable. But I don't think that's the case.
182
480664
2467
08:15
I think what really happens in science
183
483131
2399
08:17
is a model more like the magic well,
184
485530
1830
08:19
where no matter how many buckets you take out,
185
487360
1837
08:21
there's always another bucket of water to be had,
186
489197
2112
08:23
or my particularly favorite one,
187
491309
2127
08:25
with the effect and everything, the ripples on a pond.
188
493436
2939
08:28
So if you think of knowledge being this ever-expanding ripple on a pond,
189
496375
3127
08:31
the important thing to realize is that our ignorance,
190
499502
3382
08:34
the circumference of this knowledge, also grows with knowledge.
191
502884
3382
08:38
So the knowledge generates ignorance.
192
506266
2763
08:41
This is really well said, I thought, by George Bernard Shaw.
193
509029
2915
08:43
This is actually part of a toast that he delivered
194
511944
2677
08:46
to celebrate Einstein at a dinner celebrating Einstein's work,
195
514621
3677
08:50
in which he claims that science
196
518298
1414
08:51
just creates more questions than it answers.
["Science is always wrong. It never solves a problem without creating 10 more."]
["Science is always wrong. It never solves a problem without creating 10 more."]
197
519712
2265
08:53
I find that kind of glorious, and I think he's precisely right,
198
521977
3542
08:57
plus it's a kind of job security.
199
525519
2526
09:00
As it turns out, he kind of cribbed that
200
528045
2726
09:02
from the philosopher Immanuel Kant
201
530771
1852
09:04
who a hundred years earlier had come up with this idea
202
532623
2645
09:07
of question propagation, that every answer begets more questions.
203
535268
3808
09:11
I love that term, "question propagation,"
204
539076
2199
09:13
this idea of questions propagating out there.
205
541275
2739
09:16
So I'd say the model we want to take is not
206
544014
1887
09:17
that we start out kind of ignorant and we get some facts together
207
545901
3509
09:21
and then we gain knowledge.
208
549410
2143
09:23
It's rather kind of the other way around, really.
209
551553
2379
09:25
What do we use this knowledge for?
210
553932
1907
09:27
What are we using this collection of facts for?
211
555839
2528
09:30
We're using it to make better ignorance,
212
558367
2857
09:33
to come up with, if you will, higher-quality ignorance.
213
561224
3079
09:36
Because, you know, there's low-quality ignorance
214
564303
1872
09:38
and there's high-quality ignorance. It's not all the same.
215
566175
2413
09:40
Scientists argue about this all the time.
216
568588
2370
09:42
Sometimes we call them bull sessions.
217
570958
1965
09:44
Sometimes we call them grant proposals.
218
572923
1918
09:46
But nonetheless, it's what the argument is about.
219
574841
3508
09:50
It's the ignorance. It's the what we don't know.
220
578349
1844
09:52
It's what makes a good question.
221
580193
2690
09:54
So how do we think about these questions?
222
582883
1630
09:56
I'm going to show you a graph that shows up
223
584513
1952
09:58
quite a bit on happy hour posters in various science departments.
224
586465
3867
10:02
This graph asks the relationship between what you know
225
590332
4221
10:06
and how much you know about it.
226
594553
2190
10:08
So what you know, you can know anywhere from nothing to everything, of course,
227
596743
3515
10:12
and how much you know about it can be anywhere
228
600258
1683
10:13
from a little to a lot.
229
601941
2423
10:16
So let's put a point on the graph. There's an undergraduate.
230
604364
4232
10:20
Doesn't know much but they have a lot of interest.
231
608596
2364
10:22
They're interested in almost everything.
232
610960
1691
10:24
Now you look at a master's student, a little further along in their education,
233
612651
3454
10:28
and you see they know a bit more,
234
616105
1351
10:29
but it's been narrowed somewhat.
235
617456
1890
10:31
And finally you get your Ph.D., where it turns out
236
619346
2719
10:34
you know a tremendous amount about almost nothing. (Laughter)
237
622065
5105
10:39
What's really disturbing is the trend line that goes through that
238
627170
3781
10:42
because, of course, when it dips below the zero axis, there,
239
630951
3775
10:46
it gets into a negative area.
240
634726
2262
10:48
That's where you find people like me, I'm afraid.
241
636988
2915
10:51
So the important thing here is that this can all be changed.
242
639903
3368
10:55
This whole view can be changed
243
643271
1804
10:57
by just changing the label on the x-axis.
244
645075
3161
11:00
So instead of how much you know about it,
245
648236
1917
11:02
we could say, "What can you ask about it?"
246
650153
3541
11:05
So yes, you do need to know a lot of stuff as a scientist,
247
653694
2867
11:08
but the purpose of knowing a lot of stuff
248
656561
2629
11:11
is not just to know a lot of stuff. That just makes you a geek, right?
249
659190
2587
11:13
Knowing a lot of stuff, the purpose is
250
661777
2138
11:15
to be able to ask lots of questions,
251
663915
1676
11:17
to be able to frame thoughtful, interesting questions,
252
665591
3088
11:20
because that's where the real work is.
253
668679
1725
11:22
Let me give you a quick idea of a couple of these sorts of questions.
254
670404
2552
11:24
I'm a neuroscientist, so how would we come up
255
672956
2163
11:27
with a question in neuroscience?
256
675119
1431
11:28
Because it's not always quite so straightforward.
257
676550
2669
11:31
So, for example, we could say, well what is it that the brain does?
258
679219
2559
11:33
Well, one thing the brain does, it moves us around.
259
681778
1814
11:35
We walk around on two legs.
260
683592
2005
11:37
That seems kind of simple, somehow or another.
261
685597
1851
11:39
I mean, virtually everybody over 10 months of age
262
687448
2725
11:42
walks around on two legs, right?
263
690173
2172
11:44
So that maybe is not that interesting.
264
692345
1391
11:45
So instead maybe we want to choose something a little more complicated to look at.
265
693736
3148
11:48
How about the visual system?
266
696884
2775
11:51
There it is, the visual system.
267
699659
1627
11:53
I mean, we love our visual systems. We do all kinds of cool stuff.
268
701286
3248
11:56
Indeed, there are over 12,000 neuroscientists
269
704534
3391
11:59
who work on the visual system,
270
707925
1580
12:01
from the retina to the visual cortex,
271
709505
2081
12:03
in an attempt to understand not just the visual system
272
711586
2565
12:06
but to also understand how general principles
273
714151
3024
12:09
of how the brain might work.
274
717175
1951
12:11
But now here's the thing:
275
719126
1660
12:12
Our technology has actually been pretty good
276
720786
2480
12:15
at replicating what the visual system does.
277
723266
2590
12:17
We have TV, we have movies,
278
725856
3023
12:20
we have animation, we have photography,
279
728879
2495
12:23
we have pattern recognition, all of these sorts of things.
280
731374
3151
12:26
They work differently than our visual systems in some cases,
281
734525
2646
12:29
but nonetheless we've been pretty good at
282
737171
1591
12:30
making a technology work like our visual system.
283
738762
3476
12:34
Somehow or another, a hundred years of robotics,
284
742238
2936
12:37
you never saw a robot walk on two legs,
285
745174
2266
12:39
because robots don't walk on two legs
286
747440
2163
12:41
because it's not such an easy thing to do.
287
749603
2390
12:43
A hundred years of robotics,
288
751993
1528
12:45
and we can't get a robot that can move more than a couple steps one way or the other.
289
753521
3367
12:48
You ask them to go up an inclined plane, and they fall over.
290
756888
2572
12:51
Turn around, and they fall over. It's a serious problem.
291
759460
2004
12:53
So what is it that's the most difficult thing for a brain to do?
292
761464
3547
12:57
What ought we to be studying?
293
765011
1623
12:58
Perhaps it ought to be walking on two legs, or the motor system.
294
766634
4295
13:02
I'll give you an example from my own lab,
295
770929
1735
13:04
my own particularly smelly question,
296
772664
1725
13:06
since we work on the sense of smell.
297
774389
2099
13:08
But here's a diagram of five molecules
298
776488
3228
13:11
and sort of a chemical notation.
299
779716
1510
13:13
These are just plain old molecules, but if you sniff those molecules
300
781226
2996
13:16
up these two little holes in the front of your face,
301
784222
2470
13:18
you will have in your mind the distinct impression of a rose.
302
786692
3874
13:22
If there's a real rose there, those molecules will be the ones,
303
790566
2158
13:24
but even if there's no rose there,
304
792724
1560
13:26
you'll have the memory of a molecule.
305
794284
1591
13:27
How do we turn molecules into perceptions?
306
795875
3104
13:30
What's the process by which that could happen?
307
798979
1857
13:32
Here's another example: two very simple molecules, again in this kind of chemical notation.
308
800836
3960
13:36
It might be easier to visualize them this way,
309
804796
2077
13:38
so the gray circles are carbon atoms, the white ones
310
806873
2794
13:41
are hydrogen atoms and the red ones are oxygen atoms.
311
809667
2775
13:44
Now these two molecules differ by only one carbon atom
312
812442
4298
13:48
and two little hydrogen atoms that ride along with it,
313
816740
2688
13:51
and yet one of them, heptyl acetate,
314
819428
1986
13:53
has the distinct odor of a pear,
315
821414
2311
13:55
and hexyl acetate is unmistakably banana.
316
823725
3839
13:59
So there are two really interesting questions here, it seems to me.
317
827564
2557
14:02
One is, how can a simple little molecule like that
318
830121
3215
14:05
create a perception in your brain that's so clear
319
833336
2468
14:07
as a pear or a banana?
320
835804
1742
14:09
And secondly, how the hell can we tell the difference
321
837546
3121
14:12
between two molecules that differ by a single carbon atom?
322
840667
4315
14:16
I mean, that's remarkable to me,
323
844982
1646
14:18
clearly the best chemical detector on the face of the planet.
324
846628
3032
14:21
And you don't even think about it, do you?
325
849660
2776
14:24
So this is a favorite quote of mine that takes us
326
852436
2617
14:27
back to the ignorance and the idea of questions.
327
855053
1746
14:28
I like to quote because I think dead people
328
856799
2019
14:30
shouldn't be excluded from the conversation.
329
858818
2543
14:33
And I also think it's important to realize that
330
861361
1939
14:35
the conversation's been going on for a while, by the way.
331
863300
2462
14:37
So Erwin Schrodinger, a great quantum physicist
332
865762
2758
14:40
and, I think, philosopher, points out how you have to
333
868520
2566
14:43
"abide by ignorance for an indefinite period" of time.
334
871086
3465
14:46
And it's this abiding by ignorance
335
874551
1987
14:48
that I think we have to learn how to do.
336
876538
1666
14:50
This is a tricky thing. This is not such an easy business.
337
878204
2977
14:53
I guess it comes down to our education system,
338
881181
1959
14:55
so I'm going to talk a little bit about ignorance and education,
339
883140
2457
14:57
because I think that's where it really has to play out.
340
885597
2268
14:59
So for one, let's face it,
341
887865
2267
15:02
in the age of Google and Wikipedia,
342
890132
3352
15:05
the business model of the university
343
893484
1793
15:07
and probably secondary schools is simply going to have to change.
344
895277
3421
15:10
We just can't sell facts for a living anymore.
345
898698
1901
15:12
They're available with a click of the mouse,
346
900599
2050
15:14
or if you want to, you could probably just ask the wall
347
902649
2496
15:17
one of these days, wherever they're going to hide the things
348
905145
1712
15:18
that tell us all this stuff.
349
906857
1417
15:20
So what do we have to do? We have to give our students
350
908274
2883
15:23
a taste for the boundaries, for what's outside that circumference,
351
911157
3896
15:27
for what's outside the facts, what's just beyond the facts.
352
915053
4308
15:31
How do we do that?
353
919361
2157
15:33
Well, one of the problems, of course,
354
921518
1508
15:35
turns out to be testing.
355
923026
2109
15:37
We currently have an educational system
356
925135
2649
15:39
which is very efficient but is very efficient at a rather bad thing.
357
927784
3709
15:43
So in second grade, all the kids are interested in science,
358
931493
2974
15:46
the girls and the boys.
359
934467
1263
15:47
They like to take stuff apart. They have great curiosity.
360
935730
3974
15:51
They like to investigate things. They go to science museums.
361
939704
2499
15:54
They like to play around. They're in second grade.
362
942203
6188
16:00
They're interested.
363
948407
1494
16:01
But by 11th or 12th grade, fewer than 10 percent
364
949901
2934
16:04
of them have any interest in science whatsoever,
365
952835
3075
16:07
let alone a desire to go into science as a career.
366
955910
2945
16:10
So we have this remarkably efficient system
367
958855
2982
16:13
for beating any interest in science out of everybody's head.
368
961837
3973
16:17
Is this what we want?
369
965810
1914
16:19
I think this comes from what a teacher colleague of mine
370
967724
2342
16:22
calls "the bulimic method of education."
371
970066
2722
16:24
You know. You can imagine what it is.
372
972788
1373
16:26
We just jam a whole bunch of facts down their throats over here
373
974161
2948
16:29
and then they puke it up on an exam over here
374
977109
2354
16:31
and everybody goes home with no added intellectual heft whatsoever.
375
979463
4579
16:36
This can't possibly continue to go on.
376
984042
2081
16:38
So what do we do? Well the geneticists, I have to say,
377
986123
2334
16:40
have an interesting maxim they live by.
378
988457
1983
16:42
Geneticists always say, you always get what you screen for.
379
990440
5252
16:47
And that's meant as a warning.
380
995692
2861
16:50
So we always will get what we screen for,
381
998553
2319
16:52
and part of what we screen for is in our testing methods.
382
1000872
3455
16:56
Well, we hear a lot about testing and evaluation,
383
1004327
3243
16:59
and we have to think carefully when we're testing
384
1007570
2187
17:01
whether we're evaluating or whether we're weeding,
385
1009757
3087
17:04
whether we're weeding people out,
386
1012844
1459
17:06
whether we're making some cut.
387
1014303
3134
17:09
Evaluation is one thing. You hear a lot about evaluation
388
1017437
2641
17:12
in the literature these days, in the educational literature,
389
1020078
2910
17:14
but evaluation really amounts to feedback and it amounts
390
1022988
2958
17:17
to an opportunity for trial and error.
391
1025946
2154
17:20
It amounts to a chance to work over a longer period of time
392
1028100
4494
17:24
with this kind of feedback.
393
1032594
1910
17:26
That's different than weeding, and usually, I have to tell you,
394
1034504
2938
17:29
when people talk about evaluation, evaluating students,
395
1037442
2726
17:32
evaluating teachers, evaluating schools,
396
1040168
2787
17:34
evaluating programs, that they're really talking about weeding.
397
1042955
4161
17:39
And that's a bad thing, because then you will get what you select for,
398
1047116
4210
17:43
which is what we've gotten so far.
399
1051326
1958
17:45
So I'd say what we need is a test that says, "What is x?"
400
1053284
3441
17:48
and the answers are "I don't know, because no one does,"
401
1056725
3092
17:51
or "What's the question?" Even better.
402
1059817
1741
17:53
Or, "You know what, I'll look it up, I'll ask someone,
403
1061558
2390
17:55
I'll phone someone. I'll find out."
404
1063964
2700
17:58
Because that's what we want people to do,
405
1066664
1550
18:00
and that's how you evaluate them.
406
1068214
1371
18:01
And maybe for the advanced placement classes,
407
1069585
1943
18:03
it could be, "Here's the answer. What's the next question?"
408
1071528
3714
18:07
That's the one I like in particular.
409
1075242
1511
18:08
So let me end with a quote from William Butler Yeats,
410
1076753
2177
18:10
who said "Education is not about filling buckets;
411
1078930
3167
18:14
it is lighting fires."
412
1082097
2153
18:16
So I'd say, let's get out the matches.
413
1084250
3875
18:20
Thank you.
414
1088125
1208
18:21
(Applause)
415
1089333
3227
18:24
Thank you. (Applause)
416
1092560
3816
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Stuart Firestein - NeuroscientistStuart Firestein teaches students and “citizen scientists” that ignorance is far more important to discovery than knowledge.
Why you should listen
You’d think that a scientist who studies how the human brain receives and perceives information would be inherently interested in what we know. But Stuart Firestein says he’s far more intrigued by what we don’t. “Answers create questions,” he says. “We may commonly think that we begin with ignorance and we gain knowledge [but] the more critical step in the process is the reverse of that.”
Firestein, who chairs the biological sciences department at Columbia University, teaches a course about how ignorance drives science. In it -- and in his 2012 book on the topic -- he challenges the idea that knowledge and the accumulation of data create certainty. Facts are fleeting, he says; their real purpose is to lead us to ask better questions.
Stuart Firestein | Speaker | TED.com